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Cut the Long Sentences

No, this has nothing to do with judicial practice. We had a support question sent in yesterday that got me thinking. The user asked:

"I am running a “clause” search to find all the periphrastics in the NT (a form of EIMI with a participle that combines to form a verbal unit). One of my challenges is that the “clause” search returns whole sentences which means I have far more verses in the display results than I should. Is there a way to limit the display to verses so that my “hit” list is more accurate?"

I confess that I am not sure how to find periphrastics myself, but I do know that when the search field is set to Clause, the search window always displays the entire sentence, and has done so since version 1. (Did you know that you could limit searches to within a clause as far back as 1994?)

It hasn't usually been an issue, but I wanted to come up with a workaround for this user, so here it is (with examples from the new JPS with Strong's):

Define and perform your search using <AND> within a verse. (I'm just demonstrating that you get many more results, but you can omit this step.)

Narrow your search to within a clause. You get 22 hit words but also a number of verses within the sentences, but without hits in them.

Open the Highlight palette and shift-click on a style to highlight every hit word in your results.

Now search for the highlight style you chose (assuming it hasn't already been applied to other words in this text). You need to reset the field to Verse. Finally we have our 11 verses with the 22 hit words.

I hope you enjoy this little example of a practical use for highlighting.

That's a nifty work-around Helen. But it is, indeed, a work-around. Wouldn't it be nicer (and more "Accordance-like"--i.e., customizable) if there were an option to display only verses when doing a clause search? My *guess* is that the current behavior may be attempting to compensate for hits that span verses when there is not a clause break at the verse break. But even that should be "do-able" in code, allowing more than one verse to display if needed due to a hit split between two verses. If the whole sentences is needed, it can easily be displayed using the Context menu to display an extra verse.

Laurel Bryan

May 23, 2010 4:41 PM

Seconding Mary - Mr Keyes comment is so out of place here.

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